|
So, Here We Are At "Declaration Day" That is,
In short, here we are at,
I'm talking about,
More than anything, here we are at "PUT ASIDE DELUSIONS Day" That's what the original "Declaration day" was all about. It was the day the American colonists finally acknowledged that the people they had been entreating to respect their rights actually didn't want them to have their rights. It was the day the American colonists finally acknowledged that the government operatives they had been petitioning and politicking and lobbying and arguing with weren't misled or mistaken or suffering from misunderstanding, needing only to have things explained a bit better, or argued a bit more authoritatively. Instead, as the colonists realized and finally admitted by way of the Declaration, those operatives were their competitors. Those operatives were the colonists' opponents. Efforts to persuade them were pointless-- they admitted to no limits on their power and had no interest in curbing its abuse, which was being practiced for their benefit. IT WAS HARD for the colonists to reach that epiphany about their government. Because states exercise power (and partly also because they maintain an elaborate apologia dedicated to justifying that exercise as being for the good of the citizenry, or at least the way things must or are supposed to be), they come to be viewed as virtual parents in the hind-brains of those subject to that power. It is very hard for people to recognize and acknowledge that actual Mom and Dad are bad people. It is nearly as hard for people to recognize that the state under the influence of which they have been raised is corrupt and malicious. But of course, sometimes Mom and Dad are indeed bad, and states usually are. And while Mom and Dad can and often do become remorseful, and proceed to reform and redemption, states are institutionally-incapable of remorse. The only remedy against a bad state is taking away its power. Eventually, after wasting all that time and effort on petitioning, politicking, lobbying and arguing, the American colonists admitted this truth on Declaration Day and said, "No more talking-- it's time for walking!" Bless them for abandoning their child-like view of the state and becoming grown-ups at last. IT REMAINS TO BE SEEN if we modern Americans are equally deserving of blessings. We should be up to the task; after all, we have a much easier row to hoe than the colonists did. While we, too, must adopt a grown-up understanding of the true character of the dangerous servant against which we have been wisely warned, our state is already bound down by the written law, thanks to the blood and sacrifices of our ancestors. All we have to do is recognize that the state is constantly struggling to escape any limitations placed upon it by that law, and to suppress and marginalize anyone revealing its bad behavior and anything showing how it can be put back into its chains. Particularly, we have to recognize that the biggest and most important limitation put upon the state concerns its ability to take resources from individual citizens for its own use. It's this simple-- the one who controls the disposition of property is the one in charge. Because it is so important, for decades the United States has been engaged in the cultivation and exploitation of myths about what limitations are placed upon it in regard to resource acquisition. Sadly, for most of those decades most Americans have fallen for the fictions. Chief among these state-serving, people-harming myths is the truly absurd proposition that our grandparents amended the Constitution in 1913 to authorize the state's exploitation of their resources at its will, in defiance and rejection of the previous tax-limiting Constitutional rules under which the American people had become the freest and most prosperous in the history of the world. THIS IS A MYTH! It never happened, and even the premier organs of the state itself have said so endlessly-- but quietly, so as to preserve the on-the-books harmony of the law while allowing the state (and its clients and cronies) to ruthlessly exploit anyone who doesn't know to look and remains in ignorance. See the proof that this is a myth at losthorizons.com/The16th.htm. Read the 1916 Cornell and Harvard Law Review articles on the Supreme Court's unanimous conclusions about the Sixteenth Amendment. See what Department of Treasury experts admit about the income tax. See what the Supreme Court continues to say about the amendment and the tax over the decades. Learn the real history of the tax and its antecedents. See what the tax really falls upon and how it really works in application (and how and why it may have been misapplied to you in the past). See what those who have learned the long-obscured truth about the income tax have been accomplishing since that truth was revealed in 2003. Then go here and see how the state has been struggling to keep you from knowing any of this. After you take these two enlightening little excursions, recognize that every single person or institution that would lose prestige, power or profits by acknowledging the truth about the tax can be expected to lie about the subject if queried, as will every interest that sees itself benefitting from the existence of a mammoth state (which might even include those who make their living complaining about the mammoth state, or the supposed evils of the income tax). Every one of these are today's equivalents of the invested promoters and defenders of the "divine right of kings" myth that kept people enthralled and exploited in the colonists' time. But also recognize that now knowing the truth, the power is in your hands. The responsibility is, too. Rise to deserve the blessings of posterity. Make this year's "Declaration Day" real by making it a personal Declaration Day-- a day of resolution to act on behalf of liberty and the rule of law. "Like a muddied stream or a polluted fountain is the righteous man who gives way before the wicked." -Proverbs 25:26
"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, I should do and, with the help of God, I will do." -Everett Hale
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them, and these will continue till they have been resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress." -Frederick Douglass
"A nation of sheep begets a government of wolves." -Edward R. Murrow
"Be the change you want to see in the world." -Mohandas Gandhi
(Get the pledge text at http://losthorizons.com/ThePledge.pdf)
(Click on Saruman to see what he means.) |
